In preparation for this reading Traci and I worked together to determine what questions would make up the spread. After some back and forth we settled on these questions:

What is our community’s greatest strength?

What shadows do we need to be aware of?

What guidance/awareness should we hold for the present future?

There are many different spreads you can use for a reading. Personally, though I know several standard threads, I prefer creating my own spread with personalized questions. I feel creating my own spread allows me to really get down to the heart of the matter and this gives me greater clarity in deciphering the meaning of the cards. The spread is a roadmap that your intuition gets to walk down, so the clearer the points of reference (the questions) are, the easier it is to find clarity in the process.

Before starting the reading I burn white sage I recently wildcrafted. I open a window and let the smoke blow over the cards and over me. I reflect on the questions, take a few deep breaths, ground.. and then I begin to shuffle the cards. As I shuffle I wait for a sense that the cards are ready to be pulled from, a subtle sense in my body that it’s time to stop shuffling. With this reading the feeling of being done comes quickly. I cut the deck into three piles and pull from the pile I feel most drawn to.

The first card I pull is the community’s greatest strength: Six of Swords.Six of swords is a card about putting down your weapons. It’s a time of reprieve during a fierce battle. It is a sign of hope that rises during an often very draining struggle. Swords are cards about air, mental acuity, understanding with our minds, and internal struggle. These sometimes scary looking cards are often tied to anxiety, shame-based-wounds, internalized oppression and self doubt.

I feel that the cards are saying that Compassionate Revolt’s greatest strength is your ability to find a sense of peace, compassion, hope, reprieve and safety within a world that is constantly trying to destroy that which is sacred. If we understand the world to be an oppressive place and a place that we must navigate in order to exist in this life, then we understand our lives as necessarily being invested in finding skills that bolster resilience in the face of oppression. And through all the busyness, all the pain, all the wounds and wandering and loss and confusion, there is always much to do. Always a sense that we haven’t done enough. The 6 of swords is a reminder that we are whole as we are. That people love us. That there is peace in stillness. It tells us that we don’t need to feel guilty for wanting and needing to access that place of peace sometimes. We can use that place, cultivated in community and within ourselves, as a means of finding much needed spiritual nurturance. It seems that your community offers this kind of reprieve and permission to it’s members. This work is your greatest strength.

The second card I pulled is the shadows you need to be aware of: Five of Swords.

And here we see the pain and anguish that the six of swords offers reprieve from. The five of swords is card about self destruction. It’s about pain and conflict and feeling torn apart. The swords are strewn about after a battle and the worm is cut in pieces. Worms are capable of surviving after having their bodies cut apart, but in this process something is lost that can not be returned.

I feel this card is suggesting that there is a shadow of grief to address. This grief arises from circumstances that feel like insurmountable loss. It does not mean the loss is insurmountable, but it feels like it is. This is a big part of how trauma lives in our bodies – and it would seem, how it lives in your community.

This card is also about the battles we fight. The battles where it may be more self preserving to just walk away. And yet we know that just because walking away would be self preserving, does not mean it is always an option. You can’t always walk away from a cop yielding a gun. From a man harassing you on the street. From a border that you walked to because you have nowhere else to turn.

I believe that this card is asking you to address the deep grief. The grief that lies in the shadows because it feels impossible to talk about. Like no words exist. Like there is only mycelium and no mushroom. The grief that tears us apart and leaves our bodies so acclimatized to conflict and pain, that we invite more pain into our lives just to learn how to process it. Because we are used to it. Because we want to understand. Because sometimes we lose our vision that anything else can exist.

It’s time to talk about the pain that feels unspeakable. Because the truth is: it’s there, whether you address it directly or not. Give it voice. Let the vulnerability of your admissions of fear and terror and loneliness breathe life into what it means to be alive and wounded in these times.This is your work to be done in the shadows.

The third card I pulled is the guidance and awareness to hold for the future: 7 of pentacles.Pentacles are earth. They are the ground: sturdy, home, work ethic, natural discipline and practice. The seven of pentacles is a card where we look at what we have built. Notice what we have accumulated. Evaluate what we have earned. We do this in order to decide: is it worth it? What am I gaining from this process? Have I built as much I expected I would?

Often we get caught in traps of evaluating our worth by the standards of capitalism: how much money am I making? Do I have security? We are taught to understand security to mean things like savings, insurance and home ownership. This is the rubric we are taught to understand success from within colonial capitalism, but these things do not represent deep true security. How clean is our water? How nourished are our spirits? Where does our food come from? Are we able to speak our truth and be grounded in the value of both our voice and our ability to listen? These things are just a small part of what true security looks like.

The 7 of pentacles appears when it is time to evaluate and it encourages us to understand our worth and the worth of our work to be situated within the world of the elements: spirit, water, earth, fire and air. Our souls, our feelings, our home, our passions and our truth. The 7 of pentacles encourages you to focus on deep security and measure the value of your work with these ideas in mind.These should be the guiding principles you work from moving forward.

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Thank you so much for your tarot guidance, Andi! We’re so grateful for the compassionate revolutionary healing energy you’ve shared with our community!

If you’re a tarot reader, blogger, or enthusiast and would like to share space with us here at COM|PASSionate REVOLT drop us a line! We would love to have you around the playshop!

Andi is a gender-fucking-fishnet-femme currently growing food, slipping on ice and falling in love on the un-ceded territory of the Sinixt people (otherwise known as the west Kootenays of BC). They are a visitor on this land where they are making a home in a queer and trans landsteading project called the homostead. They are a settler whose family lineage descends mostly from Northern Scots (on their father’s side) and German Mennonites (on their mother’s side). They are a poet, facilitator, tarot card reader, youth worker, sex educator, community organizer, photographer, blogger, gardener, herbalist, amateur astrologer, kitchen-witch and a formerly extroverted, former yoga teacher.

We had such an amazing weekend at Catalyst Con West having “exceptional conversations about sexuality.” We learned some new things, engaged in conversations about things we’d been contemplating ourselves, explored who we are trying to reach from this little corner of the universe and just what the best way is to reach each other!

We’ve been really lucky to have been able to have done quite a bit of “conferencing” this summer. Sure, our hearts were a little broken that we didn’t make it out to Amorous Revolt last month, but between Gender Spectrum, Gender Odyssey, and Catalyst Con we really can’t complain. Going to such a smattering of conferences, these little intentional bubbles of community conversation, got us thinking about how important format/structure are in our offerings.

We may want to share information but if we don’t know how to get it to those we’re trying to reach it doesn’t get anywhere. We may want to make space for conversation but if we can’t build cultures of safety and openness they aren’t going to happen. We may want to offer support to others around us but if we’re not mindful of how we do so we may not be helpful.

This spread is to shed some light on how to offer intentional and appropriate support to others. It reminds you that you sit at the base of any support you offer, and, therefore, that energy towards your own self-care is a worthy act. Lastly, it checks in with the “heart of the matter” and any underlying reminders or intention informing our desire to support others that we might not be aware of on the surface.

Shuffle your deck as you contemplate the concept and function of support. When finished, cut your deck for as many people or groups you are drawing a card for including yourself (for example: if you want to draw for two others you will cut three times all together). Think about a person or group during each cut and then re-stack your deck. Set out your cards as shown in the diagram. Your last “heart of the matter” card can be the last card that you draw or you can flip over your deck and take the bottom card.

I played a bit with this spread and this is what I got. My heart warmed as I flipped The Star card as my heart of the matter. I absentmindedly ran my finger over the tattoo in the crease of my right elbow that holds the words: “The Star Awaits” underneath a nod to “Disaster” or “The Tower.”

In a time when I know I need to put consciousness to support the individual changes I’m experiencing as well as honoring my desperate desire to support those I love around me in ways that make sense to them– the star card reminds me to have “hope and peace of mind.” The Wild Unknown interpretation offers the reassurance:

“Even though you can’t find concrete answers to life’s many questions up there in the sky, you can’t help but feel comforted and renewed. Such is the energy of the star card. It is not about actions or situations, it’s simply about connecting to the parts of you that feel hopeful and serene.”

When I sit in places of hopeful serenity it suddenly becomes clear where I can support others, whether they need something functional or just for me to be nearby energetically, it clears up what part of support I’m truly offering for them and what parts are about my own need to ease anxiety through my inclination for service.

Support is an animal of delicate constitution in need of very specific care taking. This spread is an offering to this important healing but complicated practice.

In support and service,

Traci

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Traci {She|Her|Hers|They|Them|Theirs} is a yoga teacher, therapist and amateur tarot enthusiast! They try to believe in the power of their inner Magician, stay inspired by the Fool’s spirit, understand struggle through the lens of The Tower/Disaster and always stay reminded that, “The Star Awaits…”

Today on The Playshop I’m contemplating the place of questions and answers in our healing journeys. These two concepts/tools are especially relevant in the realm of tarot where we are working with a healing practice specifically to shake off the conscious and give space to the underlying truths.

Every healing method is a bit different. If you went to your physical therapist and asked if you could first lay the ace bandage that he was going to use to wrap you up out on an altar on a full moon it would be a little silly (okay, he might think you’re a little silly, I would be like, hey, that’s going to be one powerful piece of material). Still, you get the point, right? Different methods call for different intentions, different strategies, tools, etc. It’s important that when you’re pulling tarot you’re crafting questions that make sense for the specific way that tarot can offer guidance. This article from Learn Tarot gives some instructions to create better questions and common pitfalls to avoid.

The “answers” we get from tarot or rather the way that we “read” the cards falls in a very similar realm. Even early on in my relationship with tarot, I was lucky enough to get really sound guidance on reading tarot from a space of openness. (You can read more about my “Fool’s Journey” into tarot here.) In my opinion there really aren’t “good” or “bad” cards to get on any subject. Sure, sometimes our pulls might offer reflections that make us want to find reasons to invalidate what they’re bringing to our attention, but we have agency over how we use the information we receive. Furthermore, it’s all awareness and guidance in my opinion. There’s nothing ominous in the cards themselves- and if we feel an ominous presence in the hearts that read them we can choose to breathe lightness and positive purpose into those spaces of contemplation. This article from Biddy Tarot goes into common mistakes when reading tarot for yourself.

What it all comes down to is that tarot is a powerful practice of uncovering. This uncovering can be terrifying and requires a courageous spirit of intention…. but when that spirit is held in shuffles, pulls, and reads it shakes the dust away from our worlds in ways that offers space so clean and so clarifying that we can feel when it is clearing space for movement forward, stillness in being, or backwards reflection. All is there if we’re brave enough to ask the right questions and take in whole answers.

I’ve been reading, breathing, meditating, and doing yoga to Anis Mojgani’s Shake the Dust lately, and the closing line has really stuck with me.

Shaking the dustSo when the world knocks at your front doorClutch the knob tightly, and open on upRun forward into its wide spread greeting armsWith your hands before youYour fingertips tremblingThough they may be

With trembling open hands,

Traci

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Traci {She|Her|Hers|They|Them|Theirs} is a yoga teacher, therapist and amateur tarot enthusiast! They try to believe in the power of their inner Magician, stay inspired by the Fool’s spirit, understand struggle through the lens of The Tower/Disaster and always stay reminded that, “The Star Awaits…”

We hope your Tuesday has been as lovely as ours! We’re bringing back Tarot Tuesday in a bit of a different format. The ever talented and knowledgeable Kaeti is off following the wisdom of tarot down other adventurous trails at the moment so we’re going to make some space for our amateur explorations!

Tarot is journey, conversation, reflection, interpretation, past stories, and fresh eyes to new versions of old wisdom! We decided that we would jump back into this conversation by exploring on our own and highlighting others who were reflecting back this journey of alternative wisdom seeking and healing!

It might have taken us a few moments to really sink into this. It took a few moments to trust that a documentation of this exploration rather than what comes of longer term study would be just as honoring to this practice that we believe so much in!

As we pondered this, The Collective Tarot’s Seeker of Bottles, floated by us, “free of care and worries, the person in this card is completely present and in the moment. From this calm and quiet state, new ideas are allowed to burst forth. The message in the bottle radiates, suggesting that they are in touch with their intuition and feelings.”

And, so, we decided to lean back and trust, to be “an open channel to intuition,” to have a, “fresh attitude towards matters of the heart.”

The Seeker of Bottles reassures us, “that it is okay to let your feelings show, be intimate and risk loving. Weak knees, heart squeeze. Are you ready?”

With pure crush love,

Traci

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Traci {She|Her|Hers|They|Them|Theirs} is a yoga teacher, therapist and amateur tarot enthusiast! They try to believe in the power of their inner Magician, stay inspired by the Fool’s spirit, understand struggle through the lens of The Tower/Disaster and always stay reminded that, “The Star Awaits…”